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Wrong Characters Displaying When Font Changed

Participant ,
Dec 27, 2019 Dec 27, 2019

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I have FrameMaker 2019. I'm using custom fonts which are installed on the computer. When I select a custom font in the Paragraph Designer and apply it to a paragraph, the text changes to random characters. So something like the word "Characteristics" becomes "B12YGN/32Rtul4N." I copied the errant text into Notepad and it still says "Characteristics" but that's not what is displaying in FrameMaker. Any ideas?

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Formatting and numbering

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Participant , Jan 01, 2020 Jan 01, 2020

I closed FrameMaker and re-launched it and then I was having a license/subscription issue (too many machines with FM on it) so I couldn't get back into FM to further troubleshoot the font issue. Today, I was able to correct the license/subscription issue and opne the files. The font issue is no longer occurring. I'm not sure what is going on. Maybe the licensing issue was causing something to go wrong with fonts...? Doesn't seem logical, but I have no explanation. Thanks for taking a look and tr

...

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Community Expert ,
Dec 27, 2019 Dec 27, 2019

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What vintage are the custom fonts?

The legacy (pre-Unicode) practice was to re-use the base 8-bit code space (\x00-\xFF in FM notation, normally ASCII and extended Roman) for glyph sets that could be anything. The current practice is to use one of the Unicode Private Use Areas (PUA, such as \uE000–\uF8FF).

For example, if I apply the old MS Webdings font to "Characteristics" (or "B12YGN/32Rtul4N" for that matter), I get a bunch of arbitrary icons.

This doesn't answer your question, but might help someone who can.

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Participant ,
Dec 27, 2019 Dec 27, 2019

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The fonts are Univers Extended and Gill Sans. Both True Type fonts. Both with 1997 dates in the Windows\Fonts folder. I installed them on a different laptop around 2008. I now have FrameMaker 2019 on a new laptop and I copied the fonts over from the old laptop to the new one. I also have Univers Condensed (True Type, 2003) and that works fine (but it's not the font I need). 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 31, 2019 Dec 31, 2019

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I just tried that text in the current FM2019 (15.0.4.751), using a 1993 vintage Gill Sans TTF, and had no problems. I don't have Univers Extended, but a 1992 Univers was also trouble-free.

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Participant ,
Jan 01, 2020 Jan 01, 2020

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I closed FrameMaker and re-launched it and then I was having a license/subscription issue (too many machines with FM on it) so I couldn't get back into FM to further troubleshoot the font issue. Today, I was able to correct the license/subscription issue and opne the files. The font issue is no longer occurring. I'm not sure what is going on. Maybe the licensing issue was causing something to go wrong with fonts...? Doesn't seem logical, but I have no explanation. Thanks for taking a look and trying to help out! I appreciate it!

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Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2020 Jan 02, 2020

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re: I'm not sure what is going on.
It would be worth running a file system integrity check and malware scan. Chances are it was a temporary memory corruption issue, and won't recur {with the same symptoms}, but take what steps you can to be sure.
re: Maybe the licensing issue was causing something to go wrong with fonts...?
Doubtful. When the license is at issue, FM will either not run at all, or will warn that it's doing a run-once.

In retrospect, I'm actually surprised that we didn't see some font issues with Adobe apps over the last quarter century. Back in the 90s, cheap font CDs were pervasive at tech stores, and these were mostly based on pirated Adobe fonts. The customers would have been unaware. This matter later resolved in court (Docket C-95-20710 RMW). I suspect that Adobe was tempted to have their apps respond "unusually", if, for example, an ornate glyph other than a "¬" was detected at codepoint \xAC.

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